Digital media give us the freedom to explore new ways to display books. Google engineers created the 3D "Infinite Bookshelf". It is a compromise between a traditional bookshelf view while accommodating large amounts of books (One effect of switching from physical books to eBooks is that one can store a much larger collection of books than one would ever own in physical form). The "Infinite Bookshelf" is an infinite 3D helix that you can spin side-to-side and up and down with your mouse. It holds 3D models of more than 10,000 titles from Google Books.

Each row represents books belonging to the same genre. The books are organized into 28 genres/subjects. To choose a subject, click the subject button near the top of your screen when viewing the bookcase. The camera then flies to that subject. Clicking on a book shows the cover and the first page with a link to google books and a QR code that’s in the bottom left corner of the page, using a QR code app likeGoogle Goggles. Try the "Infinite Bookshelf" demo here.This short video explains the functionality of the bookshelf.Without physical bookshelves, there is no more shelf-snooping when you visit somebodies home or office. The books we have on display show our intellectual heritage and interests. Discovering that a new acquaintance read the same book is a great start for a conversation. But how can that happen if all our books are stored electronically? Do we give a new acquaintance acces to our shelfari, goodreads, or calibre accounts? Will we have wall-sized touch-screens displaying our digital libraries?

Browsing Google's Infinite Bookshelf (at Google NY)

Will we have physical book-dummies on display? Once we are all wearing google glasses, will visitors be able to see my personal library displayed on a wall?While Google's Infinite Bookshelf is an interesting concept, I wonder why a digital 3D library couldn't look more like this:

Clementinum National Library (Czech Republic)

Jedi Temple Library (aka Trinity College Library, Ireland)

I imagine a 3D digital library that links to my eBook collection (e.g. on goodreads or calibre) and displays books from each genre on a different book shelf (and one shelf for to-be-read). I could give visitors full or partial access to the library and allow them to borrow books. I hope that somebody will take on the task of creating beautiful 3D digital libraries for personal use.See more pictures of beautiful libraries here and here.

Interesting! Do you think is possible to create a VR bookstore to show all the Calibre Library (in my case I have 40 thousand books), walk throughout the store, pick a book and paste it to the device to read it?﻿

About Me

I am a learning scientist and science educator interested in how visual representations of concepts help people learn. My fields of interest include education, psychology, biology, educational technology, information visualizations, knowledge visualizations, epistemology, and philosophy of science.